ID: 2108
Presenting Author: Marine de Kerros
Session: 627 - The Self-Fullfilling Prophecy of local opposition to projects
Status: pending
Infrastructure projects create conflicting expectations. Withholding information fosters mistrust. Transparent stakeholder engagement is vital for success, as lessons from Africa demonstrate.
The financing and construction of road and energy infrastructure can generate high expectations among stakeholders. These expectations are often contradictory at local, national and sometimes regional levels.
Confronted with this challenge, project developers may be tempted to limit transparency and withhold certain information, fearing it could be exploited to undermine the project or cause tensions between stakeholders that they would be unable to manage. However, these strategies can sometimes produce the very mistrust, rumours and antagonism that they were trying to avoid.
Drawing on experiences in West and Central Africa in the energy and mobility sectors, this presentation will explore how transparent and organised stakeholder engagement can contribute to the success of infrastructure projects.
Marine has been an ESG professional for over 20 years and currently holds the position of Africa ESG Officer at the Meridiam investment fund.